DRIVING THE DAY -- Meredith Shiner: Despite yesterday’s Rose Garden boost by President Obama, Senate Democrats are likely to fall short today of the votes needed to break a filibuster of the DISCLOSE Act, the campaign-finance reform bill responding to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. The bill has cleared the House. But even after changes made last week by Sen. Schumer to appeal to moderates, chances for 60 votes in the Senate look bleak http://bit.ly/bKvSPU

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-- PUNDIT PREP -- White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer: “If the Republicans vote in lockstep to oppose limits on corporate influence in our elections, it will be a defining moment for the public.”

--A Senate Republican leadership aide: “The vote today isn't on the merits of the bill -- it's a vote to get off of the small business bill. The President can't have it both ways: He can't demand action on the small business bill while simultaneously demanding that we set it aside to go to a bill that doesn't create a single job.”

Good Tuesday morning. FIRST LOOK: Shifting into a higher campaign gear, President Obama is embarking on a spate of fundraising and donor-stroking in D.C., NYC, Chicago and Texas. At 7 tonight, he’ll attend a “DNC Fundraising Dinner” at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The meeting will include top activists, supporters and fundraisers. Coming attractions, according to local Democrats: In New York tomorrow, in addition to his date with “The View,” the president will do a pair of events where admission costs $30,400, the most you can give a party per cycle. One is at the home of Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and the other is at the Four Seasons.

On Aug. 5, the day after his 49th birthday, Obama is doing two “birthday party” events back home in Chicago -- a Four Seasons reception where the tickets go down to a “low-dollar” $250, and an event at a real-estate billionaire’s home, where the tickets are $30,400. The president will also do an event for Alexi Giannoulias, the banker trying to win Obama’s Senate seat. In two weeks, on Aug. 9, the president will fly to Texas for an Austin event for the DNC and a Houston event for the DSCC.

PARAGRAPH OF THE DAY -- WashPost’s Greg Jaffe and Peter Finn: “The documents' release could compel President Obama to explain more forcefully the war's importance … Obama has not delivered a major address on the Afghan war since his December speech announcing the new strategy. His statements have usually focused on the oil spill and plans for the faltering economy.” http://bit.ly/9LVjEb

--David Rogers: “[T]here’s a sense .... that there must be a greater assertiveness by the White House — in the war and diplomatically — if … support is to be sustained in the next round of funding, already beginning to move through House committees.” http://bit.ly/cCj6wB

PLAYBOOK FACTS OF LIFE: Democrats contend that Obama gains nothing by talking about the wars: The left doesn’t like to be reminded about them, and the right’s never gong to give him credit. But by doing so little to educate Americans about what we’re doing and why, the president contributed to a vacuum that benefited WikiLeaks. Now when Obama gives a big war speech, he’ll be defending. If he had kept up a rat-a-tat after the West Point address on his Afghan surge, he’d look strong. West Point transcript http://bit.ly/4J8Bn1

RICH “GRAMPS” GALEN e-mails from his iPad: “Reed and Lindsay Galen welcomed the third generation of politicos with the arrival of their daughter Dylan Grace in Newport Beach, CA Monday morning.” Reed is now at Mercury Public Affairs in California.

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FEMA ADMINISTRATOR CRAIG FUGATE writes on CNN.com, “Are disabled still at risk in disasters?”: “[O]ne of my top priorities in my first year at FEMA has been to transform the way the emergency management community thinks about integrating this vital population. From day one, we have challenged every member of our leadership team to start integrating the needs of people with disabilities into every step of planning. In February, we established the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination… We are working with disability advocates to incorporate the needs of people with disabilities into emergency communications and public alert systems, evacuations, transportation and medical equipment supply plans.” http://bit.ly/bzMYnV

2010 -- “GOP reserves $1.75M for ads in Calif. Senate race,” by AP’s Kevin Freking: “Republicans have reserved $1.75 million for television ads to help Carly Fiorina in the final week of the California Senate race. The commitment signals GOP optimism about unseating three-term Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in November. The Republicans plan to target the Los Angeles market and the money would buy enough air time for viewers to see an ad — at least in part — 10 times. Amber Marchand, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, confirmed the decision to invest in the bid of former Hewlett-Packard CEO Fiorina. She called the race ‘a highly competitive pickup opportunity for Republicans.’”

2012 -- “Thune starts prepping for 2012,” by John Bresnahan: “With speculation growing that he’ll join the wide-open 2012 Republican presidential field, South Dakota Sen. John Thune plans to roll out a sweeping proposal Tuesday to remake the congressional budget process. Thune’s budget plan would create a joint House-Senate panel on cutting government spending, call for a line-item veto and mandate that 10 percent of the deficit be cut each year until it is eliminated. As he tries to build up his policy credentials, Thune is also stepping up his political travel, headlining a Republican Party of Virginia event on Wednesday, to be followed by trips to Arkansas, California and Ohio on behalf of GOP Senate candidates. … Thune’s political travel and his efforts to make a name for himself on budgetary matters has his Senate colleagues, both publicly and privately, offering encouragement if Thune decides to enter the 2012 presidential race. … ‘I think he’d make a great candidate,’ said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. http://bit.ly/bM0idu

-- VIDEO -- Pawlenty does The Monitor Breakfast -- Dave Cook: “Minnesota Governor and potential Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty called for ‘strategic patience’ in [Afghanistan] and rejected setting ‘an arbitrary or an inflexible deadline’ for withdrawal of American forces. Governor Pawlenty spoke at a Monitor-sponsored breakfast with national political reporters. He had just returned from a Defense Department trip with four other governors to Iraq and Afghanistan.” http://bit.ly/b3kU5h

WIKI-BACKWASH, minus the Captain Obvious quotes:

--Glenn Thrush and Josh Gerstein: “[T]he reports are prompting a new wave of scrutiny of the war among Obama’s allies on Capitol Hill … That’s bad news for Obama, who needs time, patience and congressional elasticity if his new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, is to have any chance of implementing his Afghanistan surge strategy before the planned start of troop withdrawals next summer. ‘Whether WikiLeaks uncovered anything new isn’t actually important — it’s on the front page of every newspaper in the country; the media is now focused on Afghanistan, and that makes it a big deal,’ said Daniel Markey, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations.” http://bit.ly/aai240

--N.Y. Times’ Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper: “Administration officials acknowledged that the documents … will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.” http://nyti.ms/aloNHi

--L.A. Times’ David S. Cloud and Ken Dilanian: “The power of the documents is in specific stories that could help opponents of the war make a case against it, said Kristin Lord, vice president of the Center for a New American Security. … Republicans focused on the leak itself. Sen. John McCain of Arizona called the revelations ‘old news.’” http://bit.ly/d2KvuV

--WashPost’s Greg Jaffe and Peter Finn: “The flurry of hastily written documents provide a disturbing, disorienting and often incoherent history of the U.S. war effort from 2004 through last December, when Obama announced his new strategy for the country. … One former senior intelligence official said the disclosure was ‘the equivalent of when we capture a computer hard drive and get to look at all the historical documents.’” http://bit.ly/9LVjEb

FIRST FAMILY -- The White House announced: “The First Lady will travel to Spain next week for a private, mother-daughter trip with longtime family friends. President Obama will not be joining this trip. While in Spain, Mrs. Obama will pay an official visit to Their Majesties King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia of Spain at their invitation.” AP adds: “Mrs. Obama will be traveling with her youngest daughter, Sasha. … Malia will not be on the trip.”

THE EARLY BIRD, by Tim Alberta:

--“Morning Money”: BP this morning named Bob Dudley as its next chief executive officer and said it would take a pre-tax charge of $32.2 billion to cover oil spill costs, leading to a 2nd quarter loss of $17.15 billion. Outgoing CEO Tony Hayward will get an exit package worth about 1 million pounds, according to CNBC. http://politi.co/4eEvbb

--“Morning Tech”: Expect a packed house today as Apple, Google, Facebook and AT&T testify before the Senate Commerce Committee about online privacy. The companies are expected to stress the success of self-regulation and the need for increased industry innovation to protect online privacy and give consumers confidence their information is safe. Testimony excerpts http://politi.co/9xaKqN

COMMENTATOR CROSSFIRE:

--Eugene Robinson in the WaPo, “Wikileaks reveal the obvious dangers of Afghanistan”: “The tens of thousands of classified military documents posted on the Internet Sunday confirm what critics of the war in Afghanistan already knew or suspected: We are wading deeper into a long-running, morally ambiguous conflict that has virtually no chance of ending well.” http://bit.ly/bamo58

--Bret Stephens in the WSJ, “From WikiLeaks to the Killing Fields”: “Innocent civilians become the tragic casualties of war. Insurgents plant thousands of IEDs. Special-ops teams hunt down insurgents. The Taliban may have a few Stinger missiles. Pakistan plays a double game with the Taliban. The U.S. government can't keep its secrets. The New York Times has about as much regard for those secrets as a British tabloid has for a starlet's privacy.” http://bit.ly/9a8ZBm

SPEED READ:

--FT A1, “Hayward to be offered BP Russia job,” by Ed Crooks and Catherine Belton: “Tony Hayward, the departing chief executive of BP, is expected to be offered a directorship at TNK-BP, the group’s Russian joint venture, when he leaves the multinational oil group in the autumn.”

--WSJ A1, “Course of Economy Hinges on Fight Over Stimulus,” by Jon Hilsenrath: “Eighteen months after President Barack Obama administered a massive dose of spending increases and tax cuts to a weak economy, a brawl has broken out among economists and politicians about whether fiscal-stimulus medicine is curing the illness or making it worse. … One side says Mr. Obama's $862 billion fiscal stimulus prevented an even graver recession. Cutting the deficit right now, this side insists, would send the economy into a tailspin. The other side questions the benefits of the stimulus and argues addressing long-term deficits now is crucial to avoid higher interest rates and even bigger economic problems down the road.” http://bit.ly/8Z5MJm

--WaPo A1, “Among House Democrats in Rust Belt, a sense of abandonment over energy bill,” by Paul Kane and Shailagh Murray: “Senate leaders, sensing political danger, repeatedly put off energy legislation, and the White House didn't lean on them very hard to make it a priority. In the aftermath of the gulf oil spill, the Senate is set to take up a stripped-down bill next week, but the controversial carbon-emissions cap is conspicuously missing. This has left some House Democrats feeling badly served by their leaders. Although lawmakers are reluctant to say so publicly, their aides and campaign advisers privately complain that the speaker and the president left Democrats exposed on an unpopular issue that has little hope of being signed into law.” http://bit.ly/doyRLw

--WSJ A2, “States Expect Tax Collections to Rise,” by Conor Dougherty: “State governments expect tax collections to grow for the first time in two years as tax increases and a recovering economy lead to higher collections. But states are still likely to face at least two more years of financial troubles and about half will see gaps in this year's budgets if Congress doesn't extend special Medicaid payments that were part of the 2009 stimulus act, according to a report expected to be released Tuesday by the National Conference of State Legislatures.” http://bit.ly/ci95Su

--NYT A1, “Iraqi Militants Stealing Blood for the Injured,” by Timothy Williams and Yasmine Mousa in Mosul, Iraq: “Members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have been holding up blood banks and hospitals at gunpoint, stealing blood for their wounded fighters rather than risk having them arrested at medical facilities.” http://nyti.ms/atWrEH

MEDIA WATCH – WaPo C1, “Dish upon a star: Mel Gibson plays a pivotal role as Radar, TMZ wage heated gossip war,” by Howard Kurtz: “At 6:32 Friday morning, Radar Online reported that Mel Gibson's ex-girlfriend had told authorities that the actor had made a death threat involving a high-profile Jewish figure in Hollywood. ‘I want Jew blood on my hands,’ Gibson is supposed to have said, according to an unnamed source … More than three hours later, TMZ reported the same allegation as coming from the former girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, with one key detail that Radar had withheld: that Gibson's alleged target was TMZ founder Harvey Levin. TMZ made light of the purported plot, dismissively describing the Radar piece as having been ‘spoon-fed by Oksana's people.’ … The Gibson saga forms the lurid backdrop of a blogosphere battle for gossip supremacy in Los Angeles. TMZ, the Web site that made its name by disclosing Gibson's drunken, anti-Semitic rant to police in 2006, is suddenly being challenged by Radar, a twice-failed print magazine that was reincarnated as a Web site just over a year ago.” http://bit.ly/dkzn0n

BUSINESS BURST – WSJ A1, “Oracle's Ellison: Pay King,” by Scott Thurm: “Larry Ellison, founder and chief executive of software maker Oracle Corp., topped the list of best-paid executives of public companies during the past decade, receiving $1.84 billion in compensation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of CEO pay. Coming in No. 2 on the compensation list was Barry Diller, who received roughly $1.14 billion from IAC/InterActive and Expedia.com, the online travel site IAC spun off in 2005, where he remains chairman. Following Mr. Diller were Occidental Petroleum Corp. CEO Ray Irani at $857 million, Apple Inc.'s Steve Jobs with $749 million and, in fifth place, Capital One Financial Corp. CEO Richard Fairbank at $569 million.” http://bit.ly/916B5z

SPORTS BLINK – St. Pete Times, “Matt Garza pitches first no-hitter in Tampa Bay,” by Marc Topkin: “Helped by some tremendous defense, [Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Matt] Garza faced the minimum 27 batters, striking out six while throwing 120 pitches (and only 40 balls). He retired a team-record 22 straight after the second-inning walk to rookie Brennan Boesch. When it was over, the fifth no-hitter of the season, teammates raced from the field and the bench to form a circular celebration around him.” Story http://bit.ly/aEZSVb Highlights http://es.pn/aeOKLc

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Authors:

About The Author

Mike Allen is the chief White House correspondent for POLITICO. He comes to us from Time magazine where he was their White House correspondent. Prior to that, Allen spent six years at The Washington Post, where he covered President Bush's first term, Capitol Hill, campaign finance, and the Bush, Gore and Bradley campaigns of 2000. Before turning to national politics, he covered schools and local governments in rural counties outside Fredericksburg, Va., for The Free Lance-Star, then wrote about Doug Wilder, Oliver North, Chuck Robb and the Bobbitts for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he nurtured police sources on overnight ride-alongs through housing projects. Allen also covered Mayor Giuliani, the Connecticut statehouse and the wacky rich of Greenwich for The New York Times. Before moving to The Times, he did stints in the Richmond and Alexandria bureaus of The Washington Post. Allen grew up in Orange County, Calif., and has a B.A. from Washington and Lee University, where he majored in politics and journalism.